


I Will Stay (So the Lantern in Your Heart Won't Fade)

by stardustedknuckles



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Canon Timeline, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Temporary Character Death, anything can happen in eiselcross, background fjorester, brief angst, for effect you know, liberal interpretations of magic, yasha goes down when she's good and ready
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29229534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: Rage beyond death and healing hands make for quite a duo, don't you think?
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre & The Traveler, Jester Lavorre & Yasha
Comments: 16
Kudos: 304





	I Will Stay (So the Lantern in Your Heart Won't Fade)

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of an odd experiment, but I had fun.

It happens like this:

Yasha, unyielding and snarling, holding her ground and carving the life off the creature before her piece by piece. Her arms have long gone numb, her mind a sole point of focus for the instincts taking her over. Yasha is _fight_. Yasha is _kill_. Yasha is _protect_.

There's not enough of her left here to wonder if this was how Molly felt, but shorter.

On the ground behind her lies the unconscious and fading form of Beauregard Lionett. Splashes and streaks of blood stain the snow surrounding her, a furious and desperate painting in monochrome with its brush sprawled spent and slowly freezing in its center. Not all of the blood is her own, but it is enough. Her lips are parted and cracked, snow collecting softly on her broken staff and the wraps cradling her open fists.

She fought so bravely. She always has.

A shout of warning from behind and then fire explodes from within the mouth of the creature, this hideous worm with its teeth and its spines that ooze in spite of the cold and rattle with the impact. The heat sears, the light blinds, and Yasha does not stop even as the skin of her hands and face reddens and beads with sweat. Half a flying tooth embeds itself in her thigh, unheeded as she hacks again and again. There is no strategy, no form, no consciousness delivering this doom, nothing but the muscle memory of what it is to hate and to love and destroy - because Yasha Nydoorin is dead.

But not yet.

The creature attempts to flee, but Yasha is a guardian and a sentinel when she is nothing else and her sword makes a final kind of sound when it sinks deep into the sliver of flesh between the plated spines. She does not pull it back out.

The worm falls behind her, screaming.

Kill and destroy have faded and Yasha is fading too, but she will not fail to protect. She rips the tooth from her thigh and buys herself a few more precious seconds. Rage, for Yasha, has never been solely anger. Rage is her will, a hot and defiant vein buried deep until it is called and when it comes, the universe itself will bend under the force of it.

She is numb to the impact of her knees on the packed ice and to the cold seeping through the palm of the hand she braces to lean on. Her elbow buckles, drops her facedown. There isn't much time, and her trembling hand gropes desperately for Beau's arm in the snow, finds it and doesn't let go.

Once, the gods took heed of the sheer force of Yasha's will and pulled her mind from the deep. With her world in her grasp, Yasha calls forth all the strength she has acquired in service to the Stormlord, every shred of every reason she's ever had to keep pressing forward - all of it has led to this trade.

Let it be enough. Let her be enough. 

The light that blooms where her burned fingertips meet the crystallizing blood from the slash in Beau's skin breaks the dim and snowy twilight like a tiny star, and when it flares and fades with her rage she is surprised to find that there is consciousness left, though it is fading fast.

The snowfield dims around her and Yasha uses her last bit of movement to lift her head and drop it where she can see Beau's face from where she lies. She keeps her eyes on Beau's and they're fluttering, but with life or the wind she doesn't know.

It's so dark now, and warm.

_Please_.

Beau stirs, and the final dregs of the force keeping Yasha's life tethered to this plane fade with something like a smile. She succeeded. She defended. She can rest.

* * *

It happens like this:

Beauregard wakes as Yasha falls, and Jester is sprinting.

The second creature lies dead behind her and it's far, so far to get to them and the snow is driving everywhere. She's fumbling in her bag for a diamond as she goes and her sobbed plea of "Arty!" is lost to the wind, but then there are hands on her arms, keeping pace.

"Let me help you. Hold on."

It's not Artagan. It's Fjord, and the world blurs for a blink and then they're here, Beau is shaking Yasha's shoulder two feet away and whispering "Yasha. Yasha, no -"

Fjord lets go of Jester to kneel and grasp Yasha by the hips. He snaps at Beau. "Help me!" Terror sharpens his voice, but Beau would have listened anyway - she will hear her captain when she can make sense of nothing else. Between the two of them they roll Yasha face-up in the snow as Jester's voice trembles in its soft chant beside them. Yasha's eyes are open, but Fjord checks her pulse anyway. 

Jester's numb fingers scramble to place the diamond over the wound arcing across Yasha's chest and still wet, still warm. The killing blow, but far, far from the final blow. She gave her all. She always has.

"Artagan!" Jester's voice is more shrill than any of them have ever heard, and the figure in green is there almost before she's finished his name.

"Good lord, Jester, you've never sounded - oh. Oh dear. This is awful, what happened? Why hasn't Melora - ow!"

Jester looks ready to slug him again and points emphatically at Yasha, tears freezing even as they make their way to her eyes. "You, Arty. You bring her back. Caduceus is too far away and she's our friend."

He rubs his arm and looks Yasha over carefully. He closes her eyes and lays a hand on her cheek in the gentlest way any of them have ever seen from him and sighs. "She's Kord's, and he is a hard god to bargain with," he warns. "If he decides to keep her, I -" He takes in Jester sobbing and Beau sitting mute with her arm around her shoulders. "I will do my best for you, always."

"You're not mine to boss around," Fjord says quietly, "but for fuck's sake, get busy."

Artagan nods rapidly, reaches to swipe a tear from Jester's eye, and vanishes.

Time isn't the same in other planes. Artagan is back before Beau or Jester have exhaled their next trembling breaths. He's haggard, but his eyes are bright. "That was _fun_. I'll tell you all about it over a good glass of milk. But for now…" His hand is glowing like it's in negative, storm-cloud purple and indigo, and he lays it palm flat over Yasha's bloody chest. "There you go," he murmurs. "You're a special one, I knew it. Now come on, people are crying and one of them is Jester. We can't have that."

He might flash a smile to Beau, but it's hard to see through the driving snow and her own watery eyes. Fjord's arm is warm against hers where they rest on Jester's back, and now the rest of their group staggers from the storm to appear behind them.

Caleb's transmuter stone lies in pieces somewhere around a tall and lanky dent in the snow. There's no blood there, and no more curse either. Caduceus is back in action, and he kneels to ready a hand on Yasha's knee.

Yasha hasn't moved, the coil of her spirit resting over her chest like a question. Artagan frowns, snaps his fingers. "Right. I was supposed to tell you what Kord said first. It's a very short message. He doesn't talk much." He bends down and whispers in Yasha's ear, voice snatched by the wind. Just for her.

"He called you 'Champion.' If I didn't know him, I'd call that a compliment."

The purple light slides inside with a bright flare and this time everyone sees his grin when he sits up. A little blood ekes from the slash across Yasha as it seals, and then the whole bloody mess of it raises with Yasha's first sharp, ragged breath. Caduceus' hand on Yasha's knee squeezes, and her next breath sounds like sunlight.

Her eyes open and Beau is waiting, overwhelmed, knelt there at Yasha's shoulder with her hand grasped in hers. It's so much easier to touch with an excuse like this, to be seen wanting and make no effort to hide it.

Maybe the time for excuses is over.

* * *

It happens like this:

They stay huddled in their hug for a long few minutes, and none but Jester is aware of Artagan leaving. He pulls a diamond out of her ear, rubs a speck of blood off of it before pressing it into her hand with a wink. "Kord knows it's gauche to charge for gifts," he tells her. "Besides, I brought him the best Mai Tai in Exandria. Don't tell anyone." He boops her nose and vanishes, and Jester clutches the diamond to her chest and giggles in spite of it all.

The tower is set, a meal provided, and laughter comes sweeter in the wake of a loss returned. Yasha sleeps in her bed for the first time because Beau is there in it with her, warm and breathing and hers. After everything today, the last part seems somehow the most miraculous.

She doesn't wake when Yasha kisses her forehead softly, just squirms a little closer until it is truly impossible to tell who is holder and who is held, protector and protected.

But then, it's never been clear.


End file.
